Adventures in Language
by TheySpellAlice
Summary: The riders find a set of papers aboard a Dragon Hunter ship in a completely foreign language, and head for a mysterious island in search of a translator. The island of Sigrùn isn't what they expect, nor are the people who live there—but will the Hunters catch up with them before they get what they came for? Mental illness, survival and lots of nerding out, set during RTTE3.
1. Nobody Can Read

_The riders find a set of papers aboard a Dragon Hunter ship in a completely foreign language, and head for a mysterious island in search of a translator. The island of Sigrùn isn't what they expect, nor are the people who live there—but will the Hunters catch up with them before they get what they came for? Adventure and romance, set during RTTE3. Canon pairings pretty much._

Fishlegs sighed and put down the stack of papers.

"It's no use, guys," he said. "I've never seen any language like this before. I can't make heads or tails out of it."

Hiccup frowned. "But we _have_ to figure out what these say," he said. "If these lead us to rare dragons, or give us any insight on anything we can use against Viggo and the Hunters, then we can't just let it go."

A thin rain was hitting the roof of the clubhouse at the Edge, and everyone had come to sit around the fire together after returning from the raid on a stray Dragon Hunter ship.

Snotlout, as usual, was not on board with Hiccup.

"Why do we even _have_ to figure it out? This doesn't even look like a Viking language. It's not like the Hunters can read it either."

Hiccup sighed, exasperated. " _Because_ , Snotlout, they're obviously going to try to figure it out. This material was under heavy guard, and they were clearly trying to translate it themselves."

"Yeah, okay, but _we have it now,_ so—"

Hiccup cut him off. "This isn't the Dragon Eye, it's just papers," he said. "It would really surprise me if Viggo hasn't made a second copy. He wouldn't have left the original with those goons we ambushed today."

Astrid nodded. "Viggo is too smart to have made a dumb mistake like that. But that's not what I'm concerned about," she said. "Hiccup, how do we know this isn't some kind of trap to lead us into danger?"

Heather stood next to her, arms crossed. "I'm with you, Astrid—I don't like this."

Astrid took a step closer to him. "After all," she said, "we've been burned by false information before."

Hiccup's eyes clouded over as she stared at him, icy and serious. He knew she was remembering how Alvin and the Outcasts had captured him and Toothless using fake notes about night furies, mixing them in with Bork's papers. It still embarrassed him, and he felt a hot flush of shame creeping up his neck.

"Well," he started, "I guess we _don't_ know."

This wasn't the answer Astrid was hoping for, and she looked even more concerned—and had Hiccup been looking anywhere else, he'd notice all the others were doing the same.

"But," he continued, confidence in his voice again, "we can't just ignore it because it might be dangerous. If this _is_ what it seems to be—what with the maps, and the drawings of dragons we've never seen—then we can't risk Viggo figuring it out before we do."

Astrid kept her gaze steady. "Okay," she said, "but once we crack these papers, you need to _promise_ that you're not going to do anything rash."

"Rash? When have I ever—I would never—" Hiccup gesticulated wildly, getting flustered.

Astrid smirked. "Seriously?"

The others laughed.

Heather moved closer to Astrid again. "Really, though, Hiccup—we need to know that whatever these papers say, we're all going to stop and think about it before you—before _we_ —leap into any action."

The two women stared at him with such certainty that he knew there was no point arguing.

"Okay, okay, you're right," he said. "I promise not to do anything crazy. Nothing will happen without _everybody's_ input."

The twins, at the far end of the room, suddenly perked up.

"Wow, okay, way to negate our contributions like that, Hiccup." Tuffnut said, indignant.

Ruffnut nodded, throwing her hands in the air. "No respect for the crazy input!"

Snotlout ignored them. "Whatever! So how do we translate the stupid papers if Fishbrains over here can't do it?"

All eyes in the room swung toward Fishlegs, sitting at the counter with the papers spread out in front of him.

"Well," he began, his voice nervous, "I'm okay at this stuff, but I'm not exactly a translator by trade. I bet if we did a bit of digging, we could find someone else who really knows what they're doing."

"I love it!" Tuffnut interjected. "Let's replace Fishlegs!"

"Hey!" Fishlegs and Heather protested in unison.

Heather crossed the room and placed a hand on Fishlegs' shoulder. "Nobody replaces Fishlegs," she said softly.

"No, you're right," Hiccup said. "It seems like we do need some outside help; it's just a question of where to find it." He paused, thinking.

"Heather," he said, "Do you know where to find Trader Johann?"

"Not exactly," she replied, "but I know where he should be heading. It shouldn't take me more than a day or two to bring him back."

"Can you leave tomorrow?"

"On it."

The skies cleared up overnight, and Heather and Windshear were back before noon the next day, touching down right outside Hiccup's hut. Hiccup heard them land and came rushing out to meet them.

"You're back!" He looked confused. "But…Where's Johann?"

Heather dismounted from her dragon, her expression annoyed. "He wouldn't come back with me," she said. "He said it's better if _we_ meet _him_ , and I didn't wanna risk waiting for him to sail all the way to the Edge."

"So, what—we all have to fly out to his ship?"

"Yeah," Heather nodded. "But he says he _does_ know how to help us."

Hiccup's eyes lit up. "He does? How?"

"He wouldn't tell me much," Heather said, "But he said he knows just the person we need to see. He just wouldn't tell me how to find them—he said it's better if he's there to introduce us, whatever that means."

"Typical Trader Johann, huh?" Hiccup said, rolling his eyes. "Just can't get to the point without a struggle."

Heather laughed. "So," she said, "are we going, or not?"

"Of course we are," Hiccup said. "We might as well _all_ go. I have a feeling we're going to need to guard these papers pretty closely now that Viggo knows we've got them."

About four hours later, all seven riders and six dragons touched down on Trader Johann's deck.

"Alright, Johann," Hiccup said, unhooking from Toothless' harness and walking toward the nervous sailor. "Where are we headed?"

"A most remote locale, Master Hiccup," Johann began, floating his hands through the air for effect. "One that few have heard of, and even fewer have visited. I know its location through my trade, and am sworn to secrecy to protect its inhabitants."

Hiccup was impatient. "And who might these _inhabitants_ be?"

"The people of the Isle of Sigrùn, Master Hiccup," Johann said, "living under command of one Mad Marta the Poet."

Hiccup's expression didn't change, but behind him Fishlegs gasped.

" _Mad Marta?!"_ he said, visibly excited. "We're going to meet the most renowned living poet in the Archipelago?!"

"Indeed," Johann said, pleased at the response. "But we must travel by sea, and your visit will depend on my introduction. Marta's people are quite—ah— _wary_ of outsiders, especially outsiders on the backs of dragons."


	2. Sailing Blows

It was a two-day trip by sea, and Trader Johann's merchant ship didn't offer much in the way of accommodations. His captain's quarters were the only part of the ship remotely resembling a cabin, and so Hiccup, Toothless, Astrid, Stormfly, Heather, Windshear, Ruffnut, Tuffnut, Barf, Belch, Fishlegs, Meatlug, Snotlout and Hookfang were all stuffed into the nooks and crannies of Johann's cargo hold.

It wasn't as bad as it could have been, he told them, since he was just returning from a fairly major sale and had exchanged a lot of bulky items for gold and silver, but the hold was still piled high with stock. Heavy trunks, suits of armour, weapons, books and furniture loomed from all sides, and space was definitely at a premium when the dragons were on board.

Quarters were close, and the riders took turns taking the dragons out to circle the ship, both for exercise and security. The dragons didn't deal well with staying aboard the ship, especially below deck, so they were all eager to get up in the air.

Meatlug especially was prone to seasickness, and after the first few bouts of gronkle-lava vomit singed holes in Johann's deck, Fishlegs ended up circling the ship from the air for hours at a time.

Windshear, meanwhile, was still tense around the other dragons on her best days, and being cooped up below deck with them all hadn't helped. A few menacing snarls and an ominous jangling of tail-spikes had been all it took for Heather to take to the skies as well, though she made other excuses. She wanted to steer the group's attention away from anything that might paint her dragon—or herself—as a liability.

"I just think we should be on the lookout for Hunter ships," she said. "Johann made it clear that this island is hidden for a reason, and if we're being followed it won't be good."

"You're right," Astrid said, and Hiccup nodded.

Snotlout stepped in front of them both, shoehorning himself into the conversation. "I should go with you! If there's danger, you're better off with another real Viking by your side."

"That's alright, Snotlout," Heather said. "Fishlegs is already up there."

She brushed past him and climbed onto Windshear's back, and the two flew out of the hatch and into the air, leaving Snotlout sputtering indignantly below deck.

" _Pssshh_ , 'Hunter ships,'" Ruffnut scoffed. "Heather just ditched us for some _alone time_ up there with Fishlegs."

Tuffnut and Astrid laughed, while Snotlout looked furious but said nothing.

Hiccup still looked serious. "Ruff, I don't think that's what Heather—"he stopped at the deadpan smirk Astrid shot his way.

"Okay, _be that as it may_ ," he said, rolling his eyes in concession, "she did have a point. The Hunters pose a real threat out here, and we can't risk leading them right to Sigrùn. If this Mad Marta is an asset to us, that means she's a target to Viggo. We can't put anyone else in danger."

"How do we know this ' _Mad Marta'—"_ Tuffnut did exaggerated air quotes around the name—"isn't gonna put _us_ in danger? The name doesn't really, y'know, inspire a lot of confidence."

Ruffnut nodded. "Yeah, seems like kind of a red flag to me," she said. "I mean, people get names for a reason. Alvin the Treacherous?"

"Huge traitor," Tuffnut said. "And Stoick the Vast?"

" _Huge,_ " Ruffnut said, her twin nodding. "She must be really, really crazy to have earned that. I mean, Tuff and I have done _plenty_ of crazy stuff, but nobody calls _us_ the Mad Thorstons."

The twins both paused and looked at each other.

"We _need_ to make that happen."

"Oh, _definitely._ "

Hiccup threw his hands in the air. "Please do not try to earn that name, guys, I will start using it if it will stop you from trying."

The twins' eyes lit up as he continued. "You're right, though—we don't know what we're walking into. We're trusting Trader Johann on this one, which isn't my favourite thing in the world, but we don't have much choice. We're going in carefully, and if it doesn't feel right we can always back out—"

"—but we _have_ to try," Astrid finished.

She caught Hiccup's eye and smiled, giving him a steely, determined look that Hiccup returned. He could feel the sliver of doubt in his mind dissipating, the resolve in her gaze strengthening his own, and he held the moment for a few very long seconds before Ruffnut sighed loudly and flopped down onto the floor.

" _Fine_ ," she said, "but I better not have to read any dumb poetry for this mission."

"Yeah," Tuff chimed in. "Reading blows."

Two full days passed this way, and just before the dawn of the third day Trader Johann ordered all the dragons below deck. Fishlegs and Heather landed, followed soon after by Snotlout, who had been circling just above them and interrupting their conversation for several hours.

With all six dragons back in the cargo hold, the riders were quick to vacate it.

"Yes, excellent, all hands on deck," Johann said. "Your help would be most appreciated in navigating this next stretch."

"What _next stretch_ , Johann?" Snotlout said. "We've been out here for two days, and all I see are seastacks! There's nothing _here._ "

Snotlout had a point; looking around, the riders saw that they were totally surrounded by seastacks and jagged rock outcroppings, slightly obscured by the thin morning fog.

"On the contrary, Master Snotlout," Johann said. "These seastacks are Sigrùn's natural defensive perimeter. It takes a very skilled sailor indeed—" he gestured pointedly at himself "—to navigate them safely."

Hiccup took out his spyglass and looked ahead. There was a maze of rock formations ahead, but beyond it, he could just barely make out a larger landmass. "I see it," he said.

Astrid, already by his side, had her hand outstretched for a turn with the spyglass. He offered it readily, and she stared out at the same view.

"It sure would be a lot easier to get through all that on dragon-back," she said. "Johann, are you _absolutely sure_ we have to do this the hard way?"

"I am indeed, Miss Astrid," Johann replied. "It is a matter of security."

"Fine," she sighed, reaching for the rope to start trimming the sails.

It was suddenly very hard to believe that Johann had ever made this journey alone, and Hiccup found himself wondering if he ever actually had. It took all the riders plus the nervous captain himself to steer the small vessel through the gauntlet of rocks, which also turned out to feature hidden shoals and twisting, unpredictable currents. The ship rocked and swung sickeningly, and all the riders were straining at the ropes to manage the tight turns the route required.

"You couldn't have gone ahead in a rowboat to just _warn_ them we'd be coming in on our dragons?!" Snotlout yelled, halfway up the mast trying to untangle some stubborn rigging.

"Well," Johann said, looking sheepish, "then I wouldn't be able to bring my wares along, now, would I?"

Snotlout roared with frustration and slid back down the mast.

"Quit whining, Snotlout," Fishlegs said. "Sailing is how Vikings traveled just about everywhere for hundreds of years—I'm sure you can handle it for another twenty minutes or so."

The ship rolled and wove through the seastacks, and soon enough the island came into full view.

"Up there," Astrid called out. "There's a watchtower!"

The tower was tall, built into the cliff of one of the seastacks just ahead, and its stones were painted a faded blue. A light shone from its small circular window, and Trader Johann signalled back, waving his arms widely from the bow of the ship.

In response, the little window swung open like a hatch, and what looked like a bird flew out, taking off toward the island.

Trader Johann and his de facto crew steered the ship through the narrow channel between two large rock outcroppings, and as the vessel rounded it all the riders gasped.

On the other side of the maze of seastacks was a long natural harbour that curved inland for almost a mile. Astrid marvelled at the brilliance of it—a perfect natural defense system to keep intruders out, but easy access for allies to the centre of the island by sea.

The sun was almost fully up now, and it shone out over an entire village surrounding the harbour. The houses were small, skinny and brightly coloured, their walls covered in rounded shingles that looked like fish scales. As they drew further inland, red, yellow, green and blue huts came into view on the shores.

"Okay, gang," Hiccup shouted across the deck, "Remember: we need to be very cautious and _very_ polite to these people. Mad Marta might be our only chance at deciphering these papers, so we really need her to trust us."

As the ship drew level with the mouth of the harbour, and with the small yellow fish-scale house at its edge, Johann ordered the crew to drop anchor. Snotlout hauled the anchor over the side with a loud grunt and a splash.

The door to the little house opened, and a woman walked out with a pigeon perched on her shoulder.

"Trader Johann!" she called, her voice bright and lilting. "Always a pleasant surprise!"

She made her way from the house down the embankment, through the reeds at the water's edge, and tossed Johann a rope. He caught it, and narrowed the gap between the ship and the shore. He gestured to Tuffnut, who rolled out the gangplank with a dramatic flourish.

"Miss Marta, you're looking very well," Johann said, striding past Tuffnut to meet her.

That was really a matter of opinion; the young woman on the shore was very thin, as if she'd been either recently ill or consistently hungry, and there were deep shadows under her eyes. Her hair was light brown, stringy, and tied loosely to one side with a rag. On the other hand, her eyes were bright, her cheeks were round and rosy, and she smiled out at the ship as though something extremely exciting were happening.

She nodded and smiled as Trader Johann buried her with a deluge of pleasantries that somehow segued into a story about being chased by a flock of wild nadders. Her eyes drifted over Johann's shoulder, falling on the cluster of Vikings standing nervously on the deck of the ship.

"What's this, Johann?" she said, gesturing toward the riders. "I see you've brought guests!"

"Wha-? Oh, yes, yes, of course," Johann said, flustered. "Marta the Poet of Sigrùn, allow me to introduce you to the Dragon Riders of Berk."

Her eyes widened. "Dragon riders?"


	3. Mad Diplomatic

Hiccup stepped forward, extending his hand. "Hiccup Haddock the Third," he said, "son of Stoick the Vast and heir to the Hooligan Tribe."

She shook his hand readily, giggling at his excess formality. "Marta," she said, "or I guess I should say 'Mad Marta the Poet, daughter of ill-tempered sheep farmers, and de factochief of this establishment here,' if we're being official."

Hiccup relaxed at her friendly reply. "This is Astrid," he said, "Heather, Fishlegs, Ruffnut, Tuffnut and Snotlout."

"Nice to meet you all," Marta said, smiling as they nodded in her direction. "But… did you say you're _dragon riders?_ "

"Sure are," Tuffnut interjected. "Best in the Archipelago. Watch, we'll show you. _Barf! Belch! Get up here!_ "

Marta stepped back, terrified, as a squawk issued from below deck, and two zippleback heads rose out of the hatch. Barf and Belch flapped a few metres into the air before coming to rest next to Tuffnut. She watched, her eyes wide as saucers, as the twins climbed onto the dragon's back.

"Is that really…safe?" she said, staring.

"Oh, no, it's extremely dangerous," Tuffnut said, grinning. "We've fallen off and crashed into trees more times than we can _count_."

"Uh-huh," Ruffnut said.

"But the dragon, it—they—won't hurt you?" she glanced nervously from Barf to Belch and back.

"Our dragons are trained," Hiccup said. "They're not about to hurt anybody."

Tuff grinned, leaning forward to scratch Belch's head affectionately. "They may be awesome, but they're not scary," he said. "See? Go ahead, touch him."

Belch stretched his neck toward Marta, sniffing. She leaned backward in the opposite direction, veering as far away as she could without moving her feet. Gingerly, carefully, and with the other hand over her eyes, she reached her right hand out and touched the top of the dragon's head.

Belch nuzzled against her touch, and she peeled her other hand away from her eyes in amazement, taking a step closer. "What…" she stammered, "What did you say his name was?"

"Belch!" Tuffnut said. "And that's Barf." The other dragon head had drawn in close to Marta as well, and at the sound of his name he licked the side of her face.

Marta gave a small shriek, and then laughed nervously, wiping the dragon-spit from her cheek. "That's, uh, charming," she said.

"I know, right?!" Tuff said, missing her tone completely. "Here—" he shoved his sister off the dragon. "Climb on."

Ruffnut squawked in protest from the deck of the ship, while Hiccup stepped forward. "Uh, Tuff, I'm not sure that's such a good—"

Hiccup trailed off as Marta, her eyes wide, swung a leg over Barf's lowered neck. She looked at Tuffnut for confirmation. "Like this?"

The other riders watched as Tuffnut showed her how to sit and where to place her hands. "Okay," he said, his face splitting into a wide grin. "Ready?"

Marta sucked a breath in through her teeth and arranged her face into a determined expression. "Yes!"

The zippleback took off, with a shriek from Marta and a triumphant yell from Tuff.

"Tuffnut!" Hiccup yelled. "This isn't what I meant by cautious and polite!"

The dragon soared out across the harbour, and indistinct noises that could have been laughing or screaming were all that reached the deck of the ship. Fishlegs and Hiccup exchanged nervous glances.

"Hiccup, this isn't good," Fishlegs said, tugging at his hair. "If Tuffnut gets _Mad Marta_ upset—or worse, for that matter—then we might not have any other options."

"I know, Fishlegs, I know," Hiccup said. "It's probably best if I—"

Before he could finish, Barf and Belch came back into view, touching down on the shore right outside the yellow fish-scale house. Hiccup breathed a sigh of relief, realizing that the sound he could hear was definitely laughing, not screaming.

Marta, her arms still around Barf's neck, had lost her composure almost completely, and she and Tuffnut both seemed to be laughing about something.

Ruffnut strode across the gangplank and marched up to her brother. "What are _you_ laughing at?" she said.

Tuffnut just shook his head. "Ah, sis, you had to be there," he said.

"Well," Marta said, sliding off the dragon and trying to regain her composure, "I suppose you'd better all come ashore."

The other riders disembarked gladly—none of them were too used to long sea voyages anymore, and the solid ground under their feet felt good. Johann returned to the ship to start unloading cargo; meanwhile, Marta led the others into the yellow house, sitting them on mismatched chairs around a very cluttered room.

"Now," she said, "What brings the _Dragon Riders of Berk_ to the most hard-to-reach island in the archipelago?"

"…so we're hoping we can count on you to help us decipher it, for the good of every Viking and every dragon within Viggo's reach," Hiccup finished.

"I see," Marta said, her voice serious. "Well, I certainly understand the importance of the task at hand—but it actually isn't me that can help you."

"What?! But Johann said—"

"Johann said he could bring you to the island, I suppose," Marta said, cutting him off. "And while I'm something of an expert in _using_ language, I'm not much for translation." Hiccup opened his mouth to speak again, but she held up a hand to stop him. "Luckily, the best-kept secret Sigrùn has is that we're home to _the_ foremost linguistic savants in the archipelago—and he happens to be my second in command."

"Really?" Fishlegs said, excited. "Who is he? I've never even heard of him before."

Marta laughed. "And that's no accident," she said. "Jannick likes his privacy. But there are some things you should know before you meet him."

"So you will help us?" Hiccup said.

"I'll do my best," Marta replied, "but it all comes down to Jannick. As long as the conditions are right, I don't believe there's a phrase around he can't decode—but he's a bit… _particular._ "

"What do you mean?"

"Well, he's like everyone on the island in a lot of ways, I suppose," she said.

When all the riders stared back, still clearly confused, she paused. "Oh," Marta said. "But you _really_ don't know where you are at all, do you?"

"Uh," Hiccup was sheepish. "Not…not really, no."

"Sigrùn—this entire island—" Marta said, pride filling her voice, "is a _colony_ for mad people."

"What?" Hiccup said, thrown. "What…what does that even mean?" The other riders were silent behind him.

"Exactly what it sounds like," Marta said, grinning. "Tell me, Hiccup—what do you do on Berk if someone goes mad? I mean, truly mad, _completely_ mad."

"Well…" he said, "I've never really seen it in my lifetime, but my dad said they used to tie people to the mast of a ship and send them out to sea, so the gods could decide what to do with them."

"It's true," Snotlout said. "That happened to my great-great-uncle. By marriage."

"The same was the case on _my_ island," Marta said. "And it's the case all over the archipelago. Every tribe deals with its own mad folk as best it can, but when it can't deal with them any longer, it sends them out to sea. The mad Viking is tied to a mast, all alone on a small ship, left to the mercy of the sea. And do you know what happens next?"

"Uh," Fishlegs said, "Well, if they're tied to a mast and sent out to sea…wouldn't they, well…starve, most likely?"

"Aye, _most likely_ ," Marta said, her tone uncomfortably cheerful. "You'd think they would, wouldn't you?" She smirked. "But what none of the chiefs of the tribes in the area seem to know is that there's a system of ocean currents out there that operates on ships set adrift, so that they all tend to end up in predictable places."

Astrid's eyes widened. "You mean—"

"I _do_ ," Marta said. "The seastacks around the island catch wrecked boats coming from the south and the east. The island of Sigrùn is where mad folks wash up—and more often than not," she said, looking at Fishlegs, "they wash up alive."

Snotlout looked alarmed. "So you're telling me that _everyone on this island is insane_. Is that right?!"

"Snotlout!" Hiccup shot him a scolding look, but Marta waved him down.

"It's alright," she said. "I suppose it _is_ a valid question. And to answer it: yes."

"Y…yes?" Snotlout said.

"Yes," she answered. "Everyone here _got_ here because their own tribes sent them away for being mad."

"Oh, I get it," Fishlegs said. "So they call you Mad Marta because you're their chief?"

She laughed. "No, Fishlegs," she said. "They call me Mad Marta because I'm _one_ of them, mad as the rest. Madder than most, some would say."

Heather had been quiet the whole time, but her face was stricken now, and she spoke up. "So…your own people set you adrift?" she said.

"They did," Marta said. "It was… _complicated_ …but I understand why they did it. I was…well," she said, pausing, "I was _very_ ill."

"But that's—that's awful," Heather said. "How could they take you from your own _family_ like that?"

Marta raised her eyebrows. "It was my own _family_ that _did_ it," she said. "It was because—well, there's no need to get into it. But yes. I'm mad, Jannick's mad, the carpenters are mad, the fishermen are mad, the shepherds are mad. But we're here. And we can help."

Heather still looked horrified, but fell silent, staring at the floor.

Hiccup looked from Fishlegs to Astrid, and then back at Marta. "Okay," he said, "we'll take whatever help we can get. So: this Jannick guy?"


	4. Less Sanity, More Sanitation

"Right, yes," Marta said. "Jannick. He's a genius, truly. He has an eye for details and patterns that's unlike anything I've ever seen, and he never forgets a single thing. He can read almost any language if he has long enough to find the patterns in it, and he and I have put together a bit of a reference library here on the island."

"A library?" Fishlegs gasped. "That sounds amazing!"

"It is," Marta grinned, "but it's all Jannick's turf, so you'll all need to follow his rules. He takes in the world very _differently_ , which is partly why he's so talented—but it means that he doesn't always know how to behave, and when he gets overwhelmed he can get very upset. It's important that only two or three people are with him at a time, with no sudden noise. And you must be very patient with him."

"Okay," Hiccup said. "That sounds pretty fair."

"Oh," Marta said, "And you should probably keep the dragons out of sight for the time being. Some of the people here might find them a bit, ah, _stressful._ "

"Is there somewhere else we can take them?"

"There are some caves in the cliffs by the north shore of the island," Marta said. "They're surrounded by forest—that's probably your best bet."

"Perfect," Hiccup said. "Snotlout, can you get the dragons off the ship and fly them the long way around? As in, _not over the island?_ "

"Yeah, yeah, no problem."

He left the house without further complaint.

Hiccup turned back to Marta. "How soon can we meet Jannick and get started?"

"It's still early," she said. "He probably isn't awake yet-he's not much of an early riser." Marta stood up from the table. "It's better if you meet him in the afternoon, after he's done recovering from whatever nonsense he was up late doing last night."

"In the meantime," she continued, "Are you all hungry? Tired? You must've had a long trip-we're four days out from Berk, easily."

"Oh, we didn't come from Berk," Fishlegs said. "We left from our outpost, so it was only two."

Astrid snorted. "Yeah, only _two days_ trapped in a cargo hold with six other vikings and six dragons," she said, rolling her eyes. "It was a regular picnic."

"Seriously," Ruffnut said. "Don't get too close to us, there, Marta." She sniffed at the edge of her tunic. " _Whew!_ "

Marta laughed. "So it sounds like a bath might be first on the agenda, then," she said.

"Oh my gods, yes please," Astrid said.

"Why don't the three of you come with me," Marta said, addressing the girls. "As for the boys, I'll have Trader Johann show you around the island first. He's been here often enough that he knows the place well."

Astrid cast a glance at Hiccup, looking for confimration that it was a good idea to leave. He waved her ahead. "Sure, yeah," he said, sounding flustered. "Go and, uh, bathe. We'll see you later. Afterward."

"Oookay," Astrid said, and she, Heather and Ruffnut followed Marta out of the yellow fish-scale house.

As soon as they were out of sight Hiccup grasped at Fishlegs' shoulder, agitated. "Oh my Thor, Fishlegs, we smell terrible," he said. "Why did I not realize that?"

"Oh jeez," Fishlegs nodded, sniffing. "Yep, not our best first impression."

The two both turned to Tuffnut, who hadn't said anything since they'd come into the house nearly an hour before. He was sitting on a crate in the corner, resting his chin on both palms, staring dreamily into space.

"Uh. Tuff?" Hiccup waved a hand in the air.

He started. "Huh? Oh, hey."

"You okay over there? You were looking pretty _deep in thought_ ," Hiccup said.

"I am _great_ , Hiccup," he replied. "Never been better, my man." He sprang up into a dramatic stance, flexing both arms like a wrestler. "Prime condition!"

"O...okay."

Just then the door banged open and Snotlout marched back into the room, dragging Trader Johann behind him.

"Johann!" Hiccup said, turning away from the posing Viking with some relief. "Marta said you could give us a tour?"

Meanwhile, Marta led the other three dragon riders through the village, where people were beginning to wake up. There were chickens running around underfoot, and a few men and women had come outside, getting started on the day's chores.

An older man hanging laundry out to dry waved silently to Marta as they passed, smiling, and she waved silently back.

A woman who looked to be in her mid-forties, feeding the chickens at her feet, stopped to greet them as well. "Morning, Marta!" she said. "Who're these three?"

"Warriors from Berk," Marta replied, grinning.

"Berk?" the woman said. "That's a long way off."

"Aye," she nodded. "They've just gotten off the boat, so we can't stay, but you can meet them at dinner, Ida!"

The four kept walking, following the curve of the harbour through the village. Heather seemed to have recovered from her outburst earlier, and she finally spoke up again. "How many people live on Sigrùn, Marta?"

"Just shy of thirty, I think," she answered. "Everyone knows each other here, so you three stick out quite a bit."

"All these houses, just for thirty people?" Ruffnut said, starting to count them. "Seems like a lot."

"Well, almost everyone lives by themselves," Marta replied. "It isn't like a regular village where there's a whole family to every hut."

"How long has it _been_ here?" Astrid said. "I can't believe I've never heard a word about this place before."

"Probably a very long time, in one form or another," Marta said, "but it's only been a proper village like this for about ten years."

They had reached the edge of the harbour, and Marta led them between two huts toward the woods behind them.

"The ocean currents probably haven't changed much over the last few decades," she continued, "so I imagine that folks have been shipwrecking here for quite a while-but when I arrived, almost ten years back now, there were only a dozen people here, camped out around the island in different places." She paused for a moment. "A lot of people probably didn't survive long on their own in the wilderness."

There was silence for a moment as the women walked.

"Ten years..." Heather paused. "Marta, how old are you?"

"Twenty-two next winter!"

"So you shipwrecked here when you were, what, _eleven_?"

"I did."

"Whoa," Ruffnut supplied, breaking the resulting silence.

"But that's..." Heather stammered. "How did you _survive_?"

Marta led them through the woods toward a thick band of rock, and they followed along the edge of it.

"Luck, mostly," Marta said. "And the others helped me. The island I came from isn't really far from here, so I didn't drift long, and I was still awake when I wrecked on the seastacks. I pretty well screamed like a banshee until someone came and found me."

"It was different then," she continued. "Everyone was scared of each other. They all came from different places, they were mad and all alone. But because I was so young, I wasn't as threatening. A man called Finnur took me in and kept me safe-and seeing him take care of me was enough to gain the trust of some of the others on the island too."

There was silence again, and again Ruffnut interjected. "Jeez."

"Jeez indeed," Marta said. "So about twelve of us set up camp together, pooled our resources...and eventually we learned to watch for wrecked ships as they came in, so our numbers grew by, well, _immigration,_ I guess you could call it." She smirked.

"Wow," Astrid said. "So who are all these people?"

"Well, they're everyone," she replied. "A lot of former warriors, actually, who went mad from the pressures of battle." Astrid's brow furrowed as Marta continued. "Some elders who are losing their memories, as well. There are a few folks who were quite ordinary-carpenters, farmers, fishermen, bakers-but they up and went mad all of a sudden. And a few others who were born stark raving mad like me," she said, grinning wryly.

"Anyway," Marta said, pausing at a spot along the rocks, "this is the entrance to the spring. You just have to push through the brush-" she shoved aside a thick curtain of ivy, revealing a low cave in the side of the rock. "and it's just through here!"

Marta held the ivy aside, and the three women stepped past her, ducking their heads to enter the cave.


	5. Sick Burns

All three girls gasped as they stepped inside. The cave was large-about the size of the clubhouse on the Edge-and thick bands of crystal jutted out here and there along the walls. The smooth grey stone in the floor gave way to pristine blue water-a hot spring.

The air was mildly steamy, but the cavern felt cool, and the ivy over the entrance let in just enough light that they could see easily.

"Nobody should bother you in here," Marta said. "Most of us bathe at night, and all the men stick to the caves on the other side of the cliffs. There are some soaps and things over there-" she pointed to a ledge in the cavern wall-"and you can stay as long as you like, so long as you meet me back at my hut before dinnertime."

The riders thanked her, and she ducked back out of the cave.

"Oh my Thor, you guys, look at this place!" Ruffnut said, casting her arms around at the scenery. "This is awesome!"

"I gotta admit, it's pretty nice," Astrid said, unbuckling her shoulder guards. "Check out all those crystal formations! Fishlegs would freak if he saw these."

"Meatlug can never come in here," Heather said, pulling off her boots. "She'd demolish the place. All this quartz- _goodbye._ " They all laughed.

"Man," Ruffnut said, "I can't believe I'm saying this, but I am _seriously_ looking forward to this bath." She draped her heavy vest over a rock and stepped out of her boots.

"Tell me about it," Astrid said, tossing her heavy leather skirt onto the rock as well. "I never want to spend that long at sea ever again."

Heather had already stacked most of her clothes and armour in a very neat pile, all folded, away from the heap of Astrid and Ruffnut's stuff.

"You guys are so spoiled," she said. "You're so used to having dragons for everything! Everyone else in the Archipelago still sails everywhere."

Astrid raised an eyebrow at her friend. "So, in that case, I guess I'll ride Windshear home, and you can sail back to Dragon's Edge with Johann?"

" _Nooo_ thank-you," Heather said. "I'm not spoiled, but I'm not stupid, either."

The three finished undressing and lowered themselves into the warm water. Everyone normally bathed separately at the Edge-there were so few of them that it was easy enough to swing-but today they were past caring. Besides, this was a hot spring; it wasn't uncommon for Viking women to gather together and bathe in them like this anyway. Following that grand tradition, the girls sank in up to their collarbones and began to relax.

Since she'd started riding Windshear, Heather had gotten a lot less comfortable sharing baths. It had been common to do so at home on her old island, but since she'd become a warrior, she felt she was showing off a lot more than just skin to the others.

"Whoa, Heather," Ruffnut said, catching sight of Heather's bare arms above the water. "Those are some pretty serious scars you've got there." Her tone was undeniably impressed.

They were; there were huge healed-over gashes across her left shoulder and upper arm, and what looked like burn marks across her right shoulder. The burns were faint, but they crept from her shoulder out over her sternum and just past her collarbone.

Heather's eyes widened, and she dipped her arms into the water, sinking in up to her chin.

"Heather?" Astrid looked worried, but Heather just shook her head. Taking that as her cue to distract, she changed her expression completely. "That's nothing," she said, "look at _this!"_

She rose from the water, covering her chest with one arm, and revealed the blotchy, reddish burn scar that curved from the bottom of her right breast almost to her navel. "Adolescent changewing acid," she said, grinning. "Burned right through my tunic."

"Oh yeah?" Ruffnut said, eyebrows raised. "Well, try _this_ on for size." She half-stood, not bothering to cover her chest, and turned around. A jagged, much more serious-looking burn mark ran from the top of her right shoulder all the way to the middle of her back, covering most of her shoulder blade.

" _Whoa_ ," Astrid said. "What's that even _from_ , Ruff?"

"Oh, it's from Barf and Belch," she said, her tone casual. "In the early days it was pretty tough to get our timing right."

"For Thor's sake, Ruff, did that not _hurt?"_ Heather said, rising back to her original posture.

"You bet it did!" Ruffnut said. "But Tuff and I get burned all the time. You kinda get used to it."

It was true; Ruffnut's lanky body was covered in minor burns, some fresh and some healed over.

Heather seemed to relax a little more at Ruffnut's words. "Windshear got me good a few times when we first met, too," she said, gesturing to the gashes on her left side. "That's what these guys are from."

"Guess I'm lucky then," Astrid smirked. "The only times I've ever gotten hurt riding Stormfly were the times Snotlout managed to get me thrown off."

"Let's be real," Heather said, "Snotlout's more dangerous than _any_ of our dragons."

Snotlout, meanwhile, was nearly invisible behind the stack of heavy leatherbound books he was carrying. The tour of the village had been short; Johann took them as far as the blue fish-scale house next to Marta's, the ground floor of which was the library she had told them about. They'd had only minutes to take in the sight of all the books before they were abruptly put to work.

"I'm really starting to doubt your intentions here, Johann," Snotlout said, setting the books down on the deck of the ship with a grunt. "We've been with you three days and so far all we've done is help you _do business._ "

Trader Johann was unfazed. "Well, Master Snotlout, if you've _grown weary_ of labour, I suppose you can always simply pay me the going rate in gold for a three-day sea voyage on a merchant's vessel, and we'll consider it even, shall we?"

"Uh," Snotlout turned out his pockets nervously. "Hiccup!"

"Don't look at me," Hiccup said, setting down his own stack of books next to Snotlout's. "Odin knows I can't afford it. Why do you think I'm not complaining?"

"Ugh!" Snotloud scowled and stomped back across the gangplank. "Where's Fishface, anyway? Shouldn't he be _earning his keep_ too?"

"Ah, jeez," Hiccup said, running a hand through his hair. "He's probably still back at the library. I doubt he could resist all those books."

"Typical. Fishlegs gets to sit around and read while _Snotlout_ does all the work," Snotlout said, scowling as he walked.

Tuffnut crossed paths with them then, heading toward the ship carrying a wobbling stack of leather tomes. The horns from his helmet were just visible on the sides of the stack, which was piled higher than him.

"You guys?" Tuffnut said. "I got a little over-ambitious over here. Can you tell me if I'm pointing towards the ship?"

"Tuff, can you even see like that?" Hiccup said.

"Not _exactly_ ," Tuffnut replied, "but my razor-sharp Viking instincts are telling me that the ship should be..." he made a quarter-turn so that his back was to the ship. "...this way!"

Snotlout laughed, but Hiccup shot him a look. "Okay, okay, fine," he said, grudgingly taking half of Tuffnut's books.

Just then, a strangled yell came from across the water. All four men's heads turned in the direction of the sound, eyes scanning the fish-scale houses that dotted the opposite shore not far away. The source wasn't immediately apparent, but another, louder scream rang out, this time accompanied by crashing and banging sounds that echoed over the harbour.

What sounded like a grown man's voice was shouting from inside one of the houses. The words were indistinct, but it was clear the man was extremely angry. He seemed to be yelling the same phrase over and over, though none of the riders could quite catch what it was.

Then there came a resounding _thud_ and a shattering of glass.

"Oh, dear," Trader Johann said, his voice very small.


	6. Occupational Hazards for Warriors

At the sound of the crashing and yelling across the water, the four men all rushed to the portside railing, scanning the fish-scale houses for the source of the noise.

"Johann," Hiccup said, "Do you have any idea what that was?"

A small, grey blur whipped past, inches from Hiccup's face. "Or _that?_ " he added.

"Well, the _latter_ would be a messenger pigeon, Master Hiccup," Johann replied, smiling weakly.

On the opposite shore, a door burst open and a man came out. Standing easily at six-foot-five and dressed in a helmet and armour, he reared back and gave a warrior cry, swinging his arms at the air as though holding an axe.

This was a common enough sight on Berk, apart from a few discrepancies. First, the man's long beard, streaked with grey, was unkempt and wild. Second, there was no nearby threat that anyone else could see (or any other Viking around to impress, for that matter). Third, the man was swinging wildly at seemingly imaginary enemies-with a _definitely_ imaginary axe.

Snotlout stared. "What in the _Thor_ is that guy doing?"

No one had time to come up with an answer. Behind them, another door burst open: the library door, the blue house next to Marta's, and someone came running out.

Everyone's heads turned to watch as a tall, lanky figure dashed across the grass, sprinting the length of the harbour and around to the opposite shore.

"Whoa," Tuffnut said. "That guy is _fast_."

The figure's pace slowed, and Hiccup took out his spyglass to get a better look at the situation.

It was a young man in a linen tunic and pants-not a trace of armour-with floppy dark-brown hair. He was cautiously getting closer to the crazed Viking up ahead, who had easily six inches and a hundred pounds on him.

Hiccup, Snotlout and Tuffnut shot a questioning look at Johann, who just shrugged.

The smaller man stopped about four metres back and stood still, not reacting to the shouts and axe-swings.

"Sigfried," he said, his voice calm and flat.

The warrior paused, mid-swing, breathing heavily.

"Sigfried," he said again. "There's no war."

"N...no war?" the man replied, his voice hoarse.

"No war," the man repeated. "It's Sigrùn. It's Tuesday. You're safe."

"Tuesday," the warrior echoed, slowly lowering his hands.

"No war, Sigfried," the young man said again, taking a step closer. "Just Tuesday."

The warrior let out a huge sigh and sank to his knees. "The Outcasts, Jannick-the Outcasts, they were-" his voice was swallowed up by a sob, and his shoulders shook as he made indistinct sounds of distress.

The younger man-Jannick-placed a hand on the warrior's shoulder, standing stiffly beside him. "No war, Sigfried," he said again. "Just Sigrùn. Just Tuesday. You're safe."

Just then, another voice caught the attention of the men on the ship. "Jannick! Sigfried!"

It was Marta, running down the path toward the two men.

She came to a halt next to them and stopped to catch her breath.

"Marta," Jannick said simply, no emotion in his voice. He straightened up, taking his hand from Sigfried's shoulder and turning to face her.

Once she'd recovered from her sprint through the village, Marta knelt down next to Sigfried, still shaking and mumbling quietly on the ground.

"Sigfried," she said softly. "What happened? You're safe now-tell us what happened."

Back at the hot spring, the girls were still relaxing. They had run out of scars to show off eventually, and had spent a while soaking and making idle chatter.

"This is so nice," Heather said, stretching. "It's the first time in forever I've gotten to feel like a human being instead of just a warrior twenty-four-seven."

"Man, I'm not _even_ a human being," Ruffnut said, her eyes closed in a state of apparent bliss. "I'm pretty sure I dissolved a while back. I'm, like, a _mineral_ now."

"It's good to see you taking a rest, Astrid," Heather said, turning toward her friend. "You train harder than anyone I've ever seen-I don't think I've ever seen you take a day off."

"Yeah, well," Astrid said, her tone defensive, "it takes a lot more than a little water to make me forget I'm a warrior."

"You need to chill out, Astrid!" Ruffnut said, shifting closer to Astrid and gesturing widely. "You gotta _become the hotspring_."

"I'm plenty chilled out! I'm relaxed!" Astrid said, splashing stiffly at the surface of the water with her fingertips. "See? Totally relaxed."

Ruffnut just shook her head. Heather piped up instead. "I hate to admit it, but Ruff's right," she said. "You do work yourself _really_ hard, Astrid-and you look like something's still bothering you."

Ruffnut elbowed Astrid in the ribs under the water. "Spill it, sister!" she said. "What's going on under that headband of yours?"

"Nothing, you guys!" Astrid said, flinching away.

"Come on, Astrid," Heather said. "You'll feel better if you get it out of your system."

Astrid looked from left to right-both women were looking at her expectantly. "Fine," she sighed. "You're right. I've been... I keep thinking about what that Marta girl said about the people on the island."

"Which part?" Ruffnut said. "It's basically all she talked about."

"The part about..." Astrid faltered. "The part about warriors going _mad_ from the _pressures of battle_."

"Oh," Heather said, looking surprised. "That."

Astrid looked down at the water, avoiding the gaze of the other two riders. "I've been a warrior my entire life," she said quietly. "It's the only thing I've ever wanted to be. I've always known I could _die_ in battle-or I could get hurt, lose a limb, that kind of thing..."

"Right," Heather said, and Ruff nodded.

"But," Astrid continued, "it never even occurred to me that there was a third option. Going _mad_... So mad that the entire village might agree to send me out to sea? Just for doing my job?" She lifted her hands from the water suddenly, splashing Heather and Ruffnut in the process. "How can that just _happen_? What am I supposed to do to _stop_ it?"

"Astrid-" Heather started, but Astrid wasn't finished.

"I've spent nineteen years learning how not to be weak, how not to show fear, how to throw an axe, how to block enemy blows-" she continued. "And now I find out I _also_ need to know how not to be _traumatized_ so I don't go _crazy?_ " She slammed her hands back into the water, sending another spray at the other two.

"Astrid," Heather said again.

When she wasn't cut off this time, Heather kept talking. "I don't think that's ever going to happen to you."

"Yeah," Ruffnut cut in. "You're not scared of _anything_ -I don't think you're about to get all traumatized or whatever from a few battles."

"Exactly, Ruff," Heather said, smiling. "You're the last person on Earth I can see going crazy. You've always been focused, and you've always been brave-that's not going away anytime soon."

"Besides," Ruffnut said, "Those 'mad' warriors are probably just cowards. I bet there's nothing really wrong with them in the first place-they probably just got scared and didn't wanna fight anymore."

Heather raised an eyebrow, but decided to let it go, looking hopefully back to Astrid instead.

Astrid sighed-a calmer sigh this time, at least. "You guys are right," she said, her tone a little warmer. "I guess I'm worrying about nothing. It just really got under my skin, that's all."

"Speaking of skin," Heather said, "Ruff, can you grab us the soap? I still feel like I need to get clean."

"Sure," Ruffnut said, reaching for the rock ledge and grabbing a bar of soap. "Can't say I see the appeal, but here you go."

The girls passed the soap around, scrubbing days' worth of dirt and sweat from their skin.

"Do you think we have time to wash our hair?" Astrid said, tugging at her headband. "I can still smell nasty seawater every time I turn my head."

"I think so," Heather said. "I'm definitely washing mine."

Astrid set her headband on the rocks behind her, and both women undid their braids, letting their hair fall down their backs, the ends dipping into the water.

"Ruff?" Astrid said, emerging from the water after rinsing the soap from her hair. "Aren't you going to wash yours?"

Ruffnut tugged possessively at her thick braids. "No way," she said. "It takes a lot of time and fish oil to get my hair like this, and I'm not about to just throw that away."

"Come on, Ruff," Heather said. "You'll feel so much better if you wash it."

"Yeah, Ruff, come on." Astrid said. "There's even a brush over there-we'll help you braid it again."

The two women edged around the pool to move closer to Ruffnut until they were flanking her from both sides.

"It won't be that bad!" Heather said. "Come on, take it out and wash it."

Ruffnut folded her arms in defiance. "Try and _make_ me," she said.

Astrid and Heather exchanged a mischievous look.

There was a splash as they each grabbed a braid and pulled Ruffnut's head under the surface, drenching her hair completely.

She thrashed wildly until they let her up, sputtering and angry. "It's wet!" she cried. "I hate getting my hair wet!"

"Come on, Ruff," Astrid said. "You're halfway there anyway. Let us wash it."

"No way."

"I'll let you ride Windshear on the way home," Heather said, in a half-sing-song voice.

"What? Really?" Ruffnut said. "Now we're talking." She untied the strings fastening each of her braids. "Sold. Wash away, ladies."


	7. The Big Picture

**Note: Hey! Big thanks to you for reading this far, and I hope you're enjoying it. I finally got an anonymous reviewer (yay, thanks!), so to reply to AliyaAmxira: Yes, absolutely! By "mad" in this context we're talking about mental illness. As far as I can figure, the setting of HTTYD doesn't have a very advanced concept of what mental illnesses and other cognitive differences really are or how they work-and heck, neither does our modern world, if we're being really honest. As a lifelong mentally ill person myself, the notion of how "mad" people might make a life for themselves in an environment like that really intrigued me, and that's how this story came to be. And the bit about "mad" Vikings being tied to masts and cast out to sea actually came from something Stoick says in the first movie to the same effect. And you're spot-on with Jannick, too!**

 **Thanks again for reading, and enjoy! -Alice**

Sigfried looked up at Marta and Jannick, both standing over him.

"I thought-" he began, his voice hoarse and shaking. "I thought the Outcasts were raiding again. I was back there again, when I woke up. All I could see was-was-" His speech dried up, and he shuddered.

"I see," Marta said. "But you know now that you were here all along, don't you?"

"Yes," he said softly.

"And you know that you're safe," she continued, "and that everyone here is safe too?"

"Yes."

"And that nobody here wants to hurt you, and we're all going to take care of you when your episodes happen?"

He took a deep, steadying breath. "Yes."

"Good," Marta said. "Now how about we go inside and get you some tea? Have you eaten yet today?"

She helped the huge warrior to his feet, and led him by the elbow back into the green fish-scale house, with Jannick following them inside.

Hiccup, Snotlout, Tuffnut and Johann exchanged nervous glances, then wordlessly decided to head back to the library.

The ground floor of the blue house was all one room, divided into narrow alleys by row upon row of towering bookshelves. A large round table separated the hearth from the books, and it was piled high with stacks of paper, leather bookcovers and rolls of twine.

Trader Johann stood over the table, hands on his hips. "These should all be bound by now," he said, indignant. "Miss Marta's well behind on her quota this month, I _don't_ believe it."

Meanwhile, Snotlout and Tuffnut stood on either side of Hiccup, who was peering around the room.

Snotlout piped up first. "What the Thor was _that_ whole display, Hiccup? Are you gonna clue us in here?"

"Yeah, that was a little, uh, unexpected," Tuffnut said.

Hiccup sighed. "I don't know, you guys," he said. "Marta _told_ us this is a colony for mad people, so taking that into consideration, I'm guessing that's exactly what we just saw."

"Great," Snotlout said. "Just great. So you want us to _trust_ these people, these _crazy, unpredictable, insane people_ , with these extremely secret documents, all of our dragons and, oh yeah, _all of our lives_?"

Tuffnut looked from Snotlout to Hiccup and back.

"Look, Snotlout," Hiccup began. "I know things are a bit strange-"

"Yeah, just a bit!" Snotlout cut in, almost yelling.

"-but we have to look at the bigger picture here. Just because these people have..." he paused, searching for the right word. "... _problems_...doesn't automatically mean we can't trust them."

"Then what _does_ mean we can't trust them, huh?" Snotlout retorted. "We can't keep our dragons closeby, they've split us up..."

"Come _on_ , Snotlout," Hiccup said. "These people aren't a threat to us. And besides, it's actually a lot more surprising that they trust _us_ than the other way around. We probably don't make the greatest first impression."

"Aw, come on," Tuffnut said. "Who wouldn't love _us?_ "

"I mean," Hiccup said, "We do travel heavily armed with a pack of potentially-deadly dragons in tow, and they're fully aware that we have known enemies out there looking for us. Not to mention that we still smell like week-old fish."

"Can you guys keep it down?" Fishlegs' voice sounded from one of the aisles. "I'm concentrating."

"Fishlegs!" Hiccup rounded the corner to find him, sittin at the end of the aisle between two shelves, books piled on the ground around him and a huge tome open on his lap.

"Hiccup, this library is incredible! They have a huge collection of ancient legends and mythology," he said, "and histories from all over the archipelago."

"All over the archipelago?" Hiccup said, sitting down across from him. "Can I see?"

"Sure, here!" Fishlegs passed him a huge leatherbound book. "Careful, it's pretty old."

"Wow..."

Both boys disappeared into the stacks, absorbed in the material. Meanwhile, Snotlout scowled and folded his arms, and Tuffnut peered around with mild interest.

About ten minutes passed like this-Tuffnut staring dreamily into space and Snotlout scowling-before the door opened again and Marta came in, Jannick right behind her.

"Sorry to leave you all waiting!" she said brightly, jolting them out of their respective reveries.

Hiccup and Fishlegs emerged from the aisle amid a huge rustling of pages.

"Jannick," she said softly, "these are the guests I told you about."

Jannick stood behind her, almost shyly, and she gestured to each of the riders, telling him their names. "And you know Trader Johann, of course," she finished.

"Master Jannick," Johann said, sweeping his hat from his head in acknowledgement.

Jannick bowed his head at them in an odd, stiff way, his expression staying neutral.

"Nice to meet you," Hiccup said. Jannick stayed silent, but nodded again.

His eyes darted from left to right, and then he strode past Marta and the others, through the room and up the stairs at the back.

There was a brief, confused silence, and then Marta broke it gently. "He likely needs a bit of quiet after the episode just now," she said. "He'll be back down soon enough."

"Yeah, about that," Hiccup said. "What happened out there? Is everything okay?"

"Aye," Marta said, "As okay as it ever is. That was Sigfried, the carpenter."

"The carpenter?"

Marta sighed. "He was a warrior once, a long time ago," she said, "one of the bravest Vikings of the Meathead tribe, from what I'm told, and I believe it."

Snotlout and Tuffnut turned to listen as well-and so did Fishlegs, although he was lacking the context.

"From what we've been able to gather, the Outcasts undertook some very nasty, very bloody raids against the Meatheads years and years ago," she continued, "and Sigfried was on the front lines of those battles. He saved his village and scared them off for good-but he was never quite the same, even after the war was over."

"How so?"

"He got _attacks_ ," Marta said, "similar to what he had today, although often more severe. They say he would wake up in the middle of the night thinking his own wife was an enemy soldier, or stop in the middle of weeding the garden to fend off an attack when no one was there. He was quick to anger, quick to tears, and he couldn't sleep or eat regularly anymore."

"Is it because he _lost?_ " Snotlout asked. "It sounds like he had regrets about something, or-or unfinished business, maybe."

"Why do you say that?" Hiccup said.

"It just reminds me of how Vikings on Berk used to get when a dragon got away from them," Snotlout replied. "My dad used to get distracted and angry like that between dragon raids, especially if one of them hit our house. It didn't stop until he-well, until he got _closure_."

"It wasn't like that," Marta said. "Sigfried was hailed as a hero, and the Meatheads had defeated the Outcasts quite soundly. As far as his tribe was concerned, he'd done everything right."

"Huh," Snotlout said.

"But he got worse and worse," Marta continued, "to the point where he retired from the guard entirely and took up a trade instead. He became a carpenter, and a bloody good one, at that. He's actually the one who built all of our houses on Sigrùn," she said, pride filling her voice.

"So then what's he doing here?" Snotlout said.

"Well," Marta said, "things didn't get better even after he stopped training and going on patrols with the others. He kept getting worse, and any little thing would set him off. It got to the point where almost nobody could keep him calm, and one day-" she faltered.

"One day what?" Snotlout said, apprehensive now.

"He- he went into a rage, out of nowhere," Marta said, "and his wife tried to calm him down, but..." she paused again. "But he attacked her. She was alright-she fought him off-but it was a close call, and even after he came back to his senses, all full of remorse, nobody felt they could trust him anymore."

"Wow," Snotlout said, his voice much smaller.

"So they sent him away," Marta continued, "and he came to live here. It hasn't been easy, but we've found that when he has lots of work to keep him occupied, he's calmer, and if we keep an environment that feels safe, he's less prone to episodes. And we try to keep weapons well out of sight."

"But is it..." Snotlout faltered, looking for the right words. "Is it really _safe_ to have him here?"

"This might be the _only_ place that's safe for him," Marta said. "He desperately wants to stay calm, and he does everything he can to stay that way. We try to help, and he does far more than his share to help the village in return. He would never, never hurt us on purpose," she said, her tone serious, "and he certainly has regrets. But we all do-and we've done our best to make this a place where we can move past them."

"So are there others like Sigfried here?" Hiccup asked.

"A few, yes," Marta said. "They all react a little differently-but madness in warriors isn't as rare as most would have us believe."

Hiccup's brow furrowed. "How do you make sure everyone's safe, then, with so many... _unpredictable_ people?" he said.

"That one's easy," Marta said, her voice brightening. "The Watcher looks out for us."

"The Watcher?"

"Aye. She lives in the tower on the highest seastack," she said, "and she never comes down. She keeps pigeons and falcons, and keeps an eye on everything."

"Whoa," Tuffnut said. "What's _her_ deal?"

"She's afraid to go outside," Marta replied, "which she's solved by never doing it."

"I mean, I guess that works," Tuff said, satisfied.

"It does," Marta said. "It works for all of us. She has spyglasses up there, a whole set of them, and she trains the birds to do just about anything she needs them to."

"That's how you knew what was happening to Sigfried!" Hiccup said.

"Aye, exactly," Marta said, grinning. "And how I knew you lot were arriving. She sends messenger pigeons whenever anything goes on she thinks we ought to know about."

"That's _brilliant_ ," Fishlegs said. "Hiccup, it's just like what we do with terrible terrors!"

"Right, Fishlegs-although the terrors are definitely better for long distances. I think they get distracted too easily to be efficient enough at short ranges like this," Hiccup said.

"I wonder if that's something we could introduce," Fishlegs said. "The island might benefit from long-distance communication."

"Yeah, for sure-but there's the problem of their general aversion to dragons, which is probably a bit of a-"

"Will you two cut it out?!" Snotlout yelled. "I thought we were going to get to take a stupid bath by now!"

"Since when are you so into hygiene?" Tuffnut said.

" _Since I've been on a stupid ship for three days!"_ Snotlout snapped. "My hair is losing its natural glossy sheen."

"Right. Yes," Marta said. "I did promise that." She turned to Trader Johann, who had been quietly flipping through the books laid out on the table the entire time. "Johann," she said, "would you be so kind as to show these gentlemen to the lagoon on the other side of the woods?"

"Y-yes, of course!" he replied, startled.


	8. Denial is the First Step

Though they'd never actually compared notes on the subject, the boys turned out to be a lot more shy than the girls when it came to communal baths. The four of them went one at a time, with Hiccup taking the first turn.

The small freshwater inlet Johann had led them to (and promptly departed from, heading back to the library) was all the way on the other side of the woods from the village, blocked from view by a high stone ridge. Tuffnut, Snotlout and Fishlegs sat on the other side of it while they waited, perched on logs by the edge of the treeline.

"I wish Marta had let me take that book with me," Fishlegs grumbled. "I didn't think I'd be out here waiting this long."

"Whatever," Snotlout said, kicking at an acorn at his feet. "I'm glad we're out of that creepy library anyway. It smelled like dust and stuff."

"It smelled like _old books_ , Snotlout," Fishlegs said, "which is probably the second-best smell there is."

"As _if_!"

"It smelled like _knowledge_ in there."

"It smelled like a _fire hazard_."

" _You're_ a fire hazard!"

Snotlout's response was to punch Fishlegs in the shoulder- "Ow!-, but Fishlegs quickly socked him right back-" _Ow!"-_ and things looked like they were about to escalate further until Tuffnut intervened.

"As much as I want to watch you guys fight to the death," Tuffnut said, stepping in between them, "and believe me, I really do-we've got more important matters to discuss than sniffing books."

They both looked at Tuff, confused. "We do?"

" _Obviously_ ," Tuffnut said. "What's you guys' reading on this 'Mad Marta'"-he made exaggerated air quotes with his fingers -"character, huh?"

"Oh," Snotlout said. "Her. I don't really know."

"Well, where to even begin?" Fishlegs said, geekery bubbling over in his voice. "She's practically a living legend-I had no idea she was even still _alive_ , let alone that she was our age. Her work is _famous_ among the literary authorities in the archipelago."

"Hold up," Snotlout said. "The archipelago has _literary authorities?"_

"I mean," Fishlegs replied, "it's pretty well me and the seven other people in my book club. But still! I heard her verses were read out at the Meathead chief's daughter's wedding last year, can you imagine? She's written the most complete poetic retelling of the legend of the Frost Giants, not to mention the _Song of the Scourge_... And she wrote _The Seven Ships_ -that's a classic, it's _incomparable_. I wonder if she'll read it for us? Do you think she'd sign my copy?"

"Well, that was a lot of fun facts," Tuffnut said, nodding bemusedly. Then he squinted. "So are you, like, _into_ her then?"

"What?" Fishlegs replied, catching the tone as soon as he'd spoken. "Oh, no, not like that-I'm just a big admirer of her work. And besides," he said, blushing, "I only have eyes for Heather, obviously."

"What do you mean, _obviously_?" Snotlout said, indignant. "Nothing's _obvious_."

"Oh, ri-i-i-ight," Tuffnut said, ignoring Snotlout. "How's _that_ whole thing going, Fish-man?" He grinned, playfully elbowing Fishlegs in the ribs. "Fishmeister. Fisherino. Sir Fishington."

"Uh," Fishlegs adjusted his hat, still blushing. "Really great, actually."

"Psshh! 'Whole thing'," Snotlout scoffed. " _What_ whole thing? There is no _thing_."

"You can deny it all you want, Snotlout," Fishlegs said, smirking just a little, "but Heather and I _are_ a 'thing'."

"No _way_ ," Snotlout said, folding his arms. "As _if_ Heather would go for you instead of a real Viking."

"I dunno, Snotlout," Tuffnut said. "I feel like I'm gonna have to side with the ol' Fish-appendages on this one."

"Fish- _what?_ I didn't even get that one," Snotlout said.

" _Appendages_ , Snotlout," Fishlegs chimed in. "As in legs? As in Fishlegs?"

"Whatever!" he said, confusion turning right back to denial. "I'm still not buying it."

"You gotta face it, Snotman," Tuffnut said, throwing an arm around Snotlout's shoulders. "Our marine-limbèd friend here is the first one of us to land a girlfriend."

"Come on," he said, still protesting. "Has she actually _called_ herself your girlfriend?"

"Well," Fishlegs said, "yes, actually."

" _What!"_ Snotlout shouted.

"Nice," Tuffnut said, looking impressed.

"Whatever, it's not like that really _means_ anything, though," Snotlout said, adopting a new tactic. " _Actions_ speak louder than words. Have you guys _kissed?"_

Fishlegs turned an even deeper red, and Snotlout's face registered pure horror.

"That's between Heather and I," he said, trying and failing to keep his voice neutral.

"So, like, you _totally_ have," Tuffnut said, grinning hugely.

"Well..." Fishlegs gave a slanted smile, conceding. "Okay, yeah. Happy?"

"What are we happy about?" Hiccup said, rounding the stone ridge, fully dressed and with dripping hair.

"Nothing!" Snotlout cried. "Nothing makes _sense_ anymore!"

"I...okay," Hiccup said, sitting down on a boulder. "Glad to see we're all staying well-adjusted."

"Don't worry about it, H," Tuffnut said. "He's just freaked out because Heather kissed Fishlegs."

"She did?" Hiccup raised his eyebrows, and couldn't help grinning. "Wow, hey, Fishlegs! Things are looking up for our heroes, huh?"

Fishlegs reddened even further, adjusting self-consciously at his helmet.

"I don't believe it," Snotlout said, sticking his nose in the air. "I _refuse_ to accept these claims, Fishlegs."

"Come on, Snotlout," Hiccup said. "He doesn't have to _prove_ it to you."

"And why not?!" Tuffnut said suddenly. "Why shoudn't our piscatorial pal make some _grand gesture_ to prove his affection for the lovely-if violent-Heather?"

"'Piscatorial'?" Hiccup said.

"And _that's_ my cue to take my turn in the lagoon," Fishlegs said, getting up quickly and disappearing around the ledge.

"No fair, I wanted next," Snotlout said. "Ugh. This is the worst trip ever."

Hiccup ignored him, focusing on readjusting his prosthetic leg. "So those two really are a thing, eh?" he said, looking up at Tuffnut.

"Seems that way," Tuffnut replied. "And I, for one, think it's great." He moved over to Hiccup's side and slung an arm around his shoulders, gesturing broadly with his other hand. "Ah, young love, Hiccup. Is there anything more poetic?"

"Um." Hiccup shrugged out from under Tuffnut's arm. "It's really good for them, for sure," he said.

Snotlout snorted, but Hiccup continued. "I'm just a little worried about what it might do to the group if two of our riders are an actual, y'know, couple."

There was silence (finally) from Snotlout, but not from Tuffnut. "Well," he began, "what about you and Astrid? That's never caused us any trouble, right?"

"Huh?" Hiccup said. "Well, that's not the same, Tuff-Astrid and I are just friends."

"Oh, _right_ ," Tuffnut scoffed. "I'm not _that_ naive, Hiccup-who am I, Snotlout?"

" _Hey!"_ Snotlout yelled, only to be ignored again.

"No, really," Hiccup insisted. "We're not together, not-not like that. She doesn't see me like that at all, trust me."

"Wow," Tuffnut said. "News to me. Ruff and I thought you guys had been a thing this whole time."

"What? No!"

"Okay, okay," Tuffnut said, holding up his hands. "So-o-o-o..." he squinted, stroking his chin and scrutinizing Hiccup. "You _don't_ like Astrid?"

"It's not that I don't _like_ her," Hiccup said, flustered. "Of course I like her, why wouldn't I like Astrid?"

" _Oh,_ " Tuffnut said, realization dawning on his face. "So she turned you down, then, eh? Sorry to hear it, good buddy." He slapped Hiccup on the back. "Plenty of fish out there, H-man."

"No, I-what?" Hiccup was going red now. "She didn't _turn me down_ , there's nothing to turn me down _for_ ," he said. "Astrid and I are just friends, and for the good of the group, and for our mission, and for the safety of everyone involved, it's going to stay that way, understand?"

"Whoa," Tuffnut said. "Okay, jeez." He leaned over and stage-whispered to Snotlout. _"She definitely turned him down."_

"Obviously," Snotlout said, not bothering with the stage-whisper. "Astrid's been into me for years."

"Oh, gods," Hiccup said, resting his face in his palm.

"For real, though," he said, lifting his head and looking serious, "I _am_ keeping an eye on this whole Heather and Fishlegs thing. We shouldn't be tangling romance into our missions if we can avoid it."

"Right," Tuffnut said. "You got it."


	9. Strange Dialects

Astrid reappeared by herself outside Marta's hut, and was only waiting for a few minutes before she saw Hiccup, Fishlegs, Tuffnut and Snotlout all heading back from the edge of the woods. She waved, and ran out to meet them halfway.

"Where's Ruff and Heather?" Hiccup asked.

"Well, hello to you, too," she replied, rolling her eyes. "They're still out by the caves," she continued, "working on a... _project."_

"Oh," Hiccup said. "O-okay."

"Man," Tuffnut said, "I think this is the longest I've been apart from Ruffnut since she pushed me down a well and forgot about me."

"Yeah, well," Astrid said, shrugging as they walked, "maybe it's good for you guys to be away from each other now and then."

"You can say that again," Tuff replied. "I feel so _free_ right now. And yet-" he paused. "Also _empty_ somehow."

"You're probably just hungry," Snotlout said.

"Oh, true."

They made their way back to the library, where Marta and Jannick were both sitting at the table.

"You're back!" Marta said. "Excellent."

"Yeah, I feel so much better, thanks, Marta," Astrid said.

"Don't worry about it," Marta said. "Jannick, this is Astrid, another one of the dragon riders from Berk."

"Hi," Astrid said, and Jannick gave her a stiff nod, then looked back down at the table.

Marta paused, scanning the room. "Sorry," she said, lowering her voice, "but there are a few too many of you to be in here all at once. Would some of you mind stepping outside for a while?"

Tuffnut and Snotlout looked at each other, shrugged, and strolled back out of the hut.

"Well, that was easy enough," Hiccup said, pulling up a chair and sitting down at the table. Hiccup and Astrid joined him.

Marta and Jannick had cleared away all the papers, and the tabletop was empty.

"So," Hiccup began, "Here's what we found on the Hunter ship."

He pulled the small stack of parchment from his satchel and laid all eight sheets in a grid on the table. There were runes written in ink on every page, as well as six drawings of totally unfamiliar dragons and four unrecognizable maps.

"See, the letters are the same as ours," Fishlegs said, "but the language it's written in is something completely different. With other Hunter maps I'd been able to translate them alright by finding common root words and similarities, since most of the dialects in the archipelago share the same etymology-but that hasn't worked with these."

"The only clue we've been able to find so far is the dragons," Astrid said. "We figured if we could just find out what region these dragons come from, we could probably identify the language-the only trouble is that we've never _seen_ any of these dragons before, let alone the maps."

"Really," Marta said. "Where have you looked so far?"

"We've checked the Book of Dragons from Berk, as well as Bork's Papers," Hiccup said, "and all the notes we still have that we took from the Dragon Eye."

"The Dragon Eye-that's the device that Viggo Grimmborn stole?" Marta asked.

"Exactly," Hiccup said. "That was our best bet for finding rare dragons and new territory, but it's gone-so we're hoping you guys can shed some light on it instead."

"We'll do our best," Marta replied, and she stared down at the pages in front of her. "Hmm."

Jannick, beside her, was looking at the pages too, his expression neutral. He hadn't said anything.

"It isn't anything I recognize right away, that's for certain," Marta said, "and I speak four Viking dialects."

She turned to look at Jannick, who was staring fixedly at the page in front of him on the table. "What do you think, Jannick?" she asked. "Have you ever seen this language before?"

"Yes," he said plainly, not looking up.

"You have?!" Fishlegs said. "What _is_ it?"

"You have too," Jannick said, and it wasn't clear who he was addressing.

"I'm... I'm pretty sure I haven't," Fishlegs said, confused.

"Have," Jannick said.

"What do you mean, Jannick?" Marta said.

"You _have_ seen it," he replied. "It's not different."

"Uh," Hiccup said, "it looks pretty different to me."

Jannick planted his palm on the table with a small _thump_. "It's _not_ different," he said again. "It's the same language. The same."

Hiccup and Fishlegs both opened their mouths to speak at the same time, but Marta held up a hand to silence them.

"Jannick," she said softly, "if it's the same language, then why can't we read it?"

"It's _not_ different," he said again. "It's the same language-the same-it's a code."

He said it flatly, without emphasis, but the effect came across just the same.

"Of _course,_ " Hiccup said, looking from Fishlegs to Astrid in excitement. "No wonder we couldn't make heads or tails out of it!"

"We were approaching the problem all wrong," Fishlegs said. "We were so busy trying to find similarities to Viking dialects that we didn't even think of that. Hiccup, it's not etymology-"

"-it's _cryptography_ ," Hiccup said, grinning as he finished the sentence. "Jannick, that's brilliant!"

He looked across the table at Jannick, who didn't meet his gaze. "I see how things repeat," he muttered. "They repeat."

"So can you decode it?" Astrid said, looking from one side of the table to the other.

"We're going to need to figure out what _kind_ of code it is first," Fishlegs replied, "and that's going to take some work."

"Aye, that it will," Marta said. "If it's not a separate Viking language then I'm out of my depth, I'm afraid-but Jannick is exactly the man for the job." She looked at him with extreme fondness. "Jannick, do you think you can try to break the code?"

"Yes."

"Hiccup, Fishlegs and Astrid are going to help you, okay?"

"Okay."

Marta stood up and reached for a cupboard above the hearth, coming back to the table with a stack of blank parchment and several charcoal pencils. "Here," she said, handing them out. "I have a feeling you'll be needing these."

The riders casually took a piece of parchment and a pencil each, while Jannick grabbed his immediately and instantly started scribbling, looking from the Dragon Hunter papers to his own sheet and back again.

He was muttering quietly to himself as he worked, scribbling and saying numbers and letters. He wrote with his right hand, and started tapping rhythmically on the table with his left.

"So do you-" Astrid started.

" _Shhh!"_ Jannick burst out, smacking the table loudly with his palm. "Counting."

"Oh," Astrid said. "Sorry," Confused and a little annoyed, she leaned over to Hiccup. "If you and Fishlegs are good, I'm gonna get out of here for a bit," she whispered.

Hiccup nodded, and she left the library.

Marta was standing beside Jannick, watching over his shoulder as he worked.

"He's counting the frequency of the letters," she said quietly.

Jannick held up a page in front of Fishlegs. "Count the E's," he said.

"The E's?" Fishlegs repeated.

"The E's."

"Oh-okay!"

Jannick turned to Hiccup, handing him another page. "Count the I's," he said.

"Um," Hiccup faltered, then took the page. "Got it."

They spent over an hour that way, until they had counted how many times every letter of the alphabet appeared on each page. Jannick took their answers and compiled a master sheet on his parchment, making some kind of chart comparing the frequency of each one.

He said nothing at all to the others except to give them directions-to pass him a page, or to start counting a new letter. Then he told them to count how many words were on each page, which they did, followed by how many letters were in each word.

He wrote each number in order, first writing out a long series of the total word counts per page, followed by the letter count of each word expressed as a list. He cross-referenced each number with a letter, first in alphabetical and then in reverse-alphabetical order. He took the numbered series and did several complex mathematical operations on them, none of which made the slightest bit of sense to Fishlegs or Marta. Hiccup followed along with about a third of each calculation before getting lost.

Finally, nearing the end of a long string of numbers he was writing out in increasingly tiny handwriting, Jannick's charcoal snapped, and he threw it across the table with an abrupt yell. He stood up and stormed away from the table, kicking his chair as he went, and stomped up the stairs and out of sight.

"Jannick," Marta called softly after him.

There was no reply, but she didn't look worried. "He's all right," she said. "He's just gotten frustrated."

"A feeling I relate to," Hiccup said. "Maybe it's time we took a break."

"Agreed," Fishlegs said. "I'm going to go see if Heather and Ruffnut are back from the springs yet."

"Good idea," Hiccup said, getting up and stretching. "I'm going to go get some air too, maybe check on the dragons."

"I should go too, actually," Marta said. "I'm going to go tell Ida we've got extra places at dinner tonight." She headed for the door, but turned to face the two men on her way out. "Make sure all of you are at the hall at the end of the harbour at seven," she said, smiling. "Mad folks are the best cooks in the archipelago-you won't want to miss out."

Fishlegs and Hiccup went their separate ways outside the blue fish-scale house, and Hiccup found himself resting next to the harbour, sitting on the shore with his legs dangling over the edge. His head was buzzing with numbers and letters, and he hoped that the view and the salty air would help clear it a little.

It was only just beginning to work when he heard footsteps in the grass behind him.


	10. Old Habits

"How goes the code-breaking?" Astrid said, joining Hiccup at the edge of the water.

" _Slow_ ," he replied, running a hand through his hair. "But we're making progress. Jannick does a lot on his own, so we're just trying to help him out."

"Really, eh?" Astrid said, smirking. "He's smarter than you _and_ Fishlegs put together?"

"Seems like it," Hiccup said, laughing sheepishly. "We're pretty lucky he's on our side."

"No kidding."

"Speaking of 'our side', I was thinking I should probably go check on the dragons before dinner," Hiccup said. "Wanna come too?"

"Sure, okay," Astrid replied. They both got up and stretched.

"It's a bit of a walk," he said. "Marta was really serious about keeping them out of sight."

"Yeah," Astrid said, nodding as they started on their way up along the harbour. "Seems like overkill if you ask me. She couldn't just warn everybody, 'hey, by the way, we've got dragons around for a couple days'?"

"I don't know," Hiccup said. "After what I saw today I kind of see the reasoning."

"What do you mean, what you saw today?"

The sun was still high above them, the sky almost cloudless, and light reflected off of the harbour in all directions. The brightness of the water-of all the multi-coloured huts-was garish, almost aggressive, and dry reeds crunched underfoot as they headed through the village.

Hiccup tugged nervously at the small braid behind his ear as they walked. "We saw this guy having some kind of _breakdown_ ," he said. "I mean, I guess Marta _did_ warn us, but she seems so normal-it was-well, it was pretty messed up. _He_ was really messed up."

Astrid looked at him, eyebrows raised. "What happened?"

He told her what they'd seen from the ship, and what Marta had told them afterwards, after she and Jannick had gotten the man settled and safely inside again. The length of the story took them as far as the woods, where the garishness dissipated under the thick canopy. Hiccup looked at the ground as he spoke, and glanced back up at Astrid when he finished.

Her face was completely white.

"Astrid?" His expression turned worried. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," she said, but she chewed at her lower lip and grasped nervously at her upper arm, and Hiccup detected the almost-imperceptible tremor in her voice that showed she wasn't.

Hiccup stopped dead, stepping into her path and facing her. " _Astrid_ ," he said. "Come on, that's not going to work on me forever."

She looked up at him, her expression defiant, still chewing her lip. "I don't know what you're talking about," she said, casting her eyes back down.

"Yes, you do," Hiccup said.

"No, I really don't."

"Yes, you really do." He sighed. "Astrid. Keeping secrets isn't going to help anything, whatever it is."

She chewed her lip and held her arm and said nothing, not meeting his gaze.

"Astrid, you know you can _trust_ me, right? Whatever it is-"

"It's not _that_ ," she said, cutting him off. "I just don't think you'll-" she paused, taking a deep, sharp breath, and shut down again.

Hiccup put a hand on her shoulder-guard. "You don't think I'll what?" he said. "You don't think I'll understand?"

Astrid sighed. "I'm just worried you'll lose respect for me if I tell you," she said, colour coming back into her face.

Hiccup looked at her in blunt surprise, mouth open. "Don't be ridiculous," he said, his lips forming a small smile.

"I'm _not_ ," Astrid said, her voice openly stricken now. She looked down again, teeth clamping hard onto her lower lip.

"Astrid," Hiccup said, grabbing her hand and holding it in both of his. "I've got more respect for you than for anybody else I know put _together_. Whatever's bothering you isn't about to change that."

Her expression softened a little at his words, and she stole a quick glance upwards, meeting his eyes for a split second before looking down again.

"You promise?" she said softly.

He squeezed her hand. "I promise."

She exhaled slowly. "Okay. I'm... I'm worried about all these warriors that went mad from being at war." She inhaled sharply. "I'm worried that it could happen to me."

She didn't need to explain what that meant for her-Astrid, the lifelong Viking warrior, the soldier, the protector, who spent countless hours training, whose battle axe had been her most valued possession since childhood. Astrid, who was stronger than anyone Hiccup knew, and always had been.

Astrid looked up at him nervously as these realizations crashed across his face, and in a split second he dropped her hand and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close. Her eyes widened for an instant, but she rested her head on Hiccup's shoulder, letting him comfort her-just this once.

"I mentioned it to Heather and Ruffnut," she said quietly, "but they just told me it would never happen. And I want to believe them, Hiccup, I do-"

"But what?" Hiccup replied, his voice barely above a whisper, his mouth inches from her ear.

"I just _don't_ ," she said. "The warrior here-Sigfried-he didn't do anything wrong. He wasn't a coward, or a bad soldier. It wasn't that he was weak, or he didn't train hard enough. He did everything a good Viking is supposed to do, Hiccup! He went into battle to protect his tribe, and he didn't back down for anything, and then one day he just _couldn't_ anymore. And after everything he went through, his own people he worked so hard to protect _abandoned_ him!" Hiccup felt her shudder against him. "If it could happen to him, then who's to say it won't happen to me? What's the difference between Sigfried and me?"

She buried her face against Hiccup's shoulder, and her arms wrapped around his waist as he held her a little tighter, reacting to her now-very-obvious distress.

"You've got me, for starters," Hiccup said softly. "You've got all of us."

He tucked a loose strand of blonde hair behind her ear. "I wish I could promise nothing will ever happen that will make you like Sigfried," he said, "but I can't know that for sure, and that scares the hell out of me." He paused. "But what I _can_ promise you is that we're _never_ going to abandon you like Sigfried's people abandoned him. I don't care how crazy you get, Astrid," he said. "I'm not going anywhere."

Hiccup felt Astrid relax a little against him, and he smiled faintly.

"Even if I get aggressive like Sigfried?" Astrid said, turning her head so her voice wasn't muffled.

Hiccup smirked. "You're _always_ aggressive."

She snorted. "You know what I mean. What if I'm, you know, yelling and swinging an axe around?"

"Still sounds like vintage Hofferson to me," Hiccup said. Astrid took a hand off his waist and punched him in the kidney. "-Ow! Case in point!"

She finally lifted her head completely to look up at Hiccup, a half-smile on her face. "Thanks," she said. "I really needed to hear that."

"Ah, it's no proble-" Hiccup stopped, looking down at her face. "Astrid, you're bleeding!"

"I am? Where?"

He tilted his head to one side and lifted his hand, gently running his thumb along Astrid's lower lip. "Here," he said, holding it up to show her the smudge of blood on it.

Astrid curled her lip into her mouth, tasting the blood. "Oops," she said, looking down sheepishly and instinctively biting at the exact same spot. "Bad habit."

"You're just making it worse!" Hiccup said, sliding his thumb across her lip again, and her teeth released it. "There."

Astrid looked up at him then, and their eyes met, and in that moment Hiccup was suddenly conscious of how close together they were, how many social boundaries he'd crashed through by touching her lip, by holding her like this. He was fractions of a second away from pulling back, letting her go-but in that same instant Astrid tilted her head upwards and kissed him.

This had happened before-Astrid suddenly kissing him-but not for almost four years, so long that Hiccup had barely dared to hope it would happen again. The thought of kissing her himself, of doing it first, seemed riddled with complications, since he was more or less the leader of their group.

The idea that she might reject him-or that she might not reject him even if she wanted to, worrying about how it would affect the Edge and their operations-had scared him off of the idea, even though it had been on his mind for months now. His hands had been tied by his sense of duty to the group, but now... well, now his hands were on Astrid's back, on the side of her face, and her lips were on his. If the ball was in his court now, Hiccup decided, he wasn't going to waste the chance.

He pulled her closer and deepened the kiss, and she made a small approving noise when he did. Hiccup let one of his hands slide down her back to her waist, the other one gently tracing the edge of her jaw. She had one hand on his lower back now and one at the back of his neck, her fingers batting gently at the small braids in his hair. Old feelings he'd been trying hard to tamp down came surging up again, and it was such an incredible relief to just let them.

Hiccup felt Astrid's tongue brush lazily against his lips, and he very tentatively tried to duplicate the move.

He pulled back abruptly, and Astrid looked up at him in concern, her face flushed. "Something wrong?"

"Tastes like blood," he answered, sheepish.

"Oh," she replied, putting a hand over her mouth.

"I mean," Hiccup said, "Not that I'm complaining."

She gave him a weird look, and he backpedaled hastily. "I mean I _am_ complaining about the blood," he said. "But. You know. The experience as a whole, I mean-that was generally complaint-free."

Astrid grinned and rolled her eyes. "You are _such_ a dork, Hiccup," she said, untangling her limbs from his. She planted a kiss on his cheek and then started walking, not checking whether or not he was following yet.

"Hey, wait up!" Hiccup called after her. "Got any _other_ pent-up secrets you feel like sharing, Astrid?"

"Shut up," she yelled over her shoulder.

"Come on, that's two-you don't have a third thing to tell me? Make it a nice significant number?"

"You're the worst."

"Hey, two out of three's not bad."

"Oh my gods, Hiccup."


	11. Intractable Situations

**Back again with more! Gonna take a lot longer to update these days now that I'm back in school, and this one's just short, but better things coming soon. Thanks for the reviews, and hope you like it!  
**

Up in the tower, over the maze of seastacks, the seabreeze was drifting in through the open windows, and the afternoon sun splayed strange disks of light across the whitewashed walls. The little round room was filled with glinting metal birdcages and spyglasses on wooden stands, and they caught the sun in strange ways.

A small woman stood at the window facing the sea, her round face pressed to the eyepiece of a long spyglass. Her hair was in a long braid down her back, black streaked with grey, and her skin was brown and without freckles.

She stretched her arm out to adjust the spyglass, bringing the object out in the distance into focus. It was something small gliding through the air toward the island, miles out still but undoubtedly approaching. The woman squinted into the lens until she was able to identify the thing: a bright-green terrible terror, leisurely making its way toward Sigrun.

The woman stepped back from the spyglass and grabbed a piece of parchment from the table behind her. She bent down and began scribbling furiously with a piece of charcoal.

When Hiccup and Astrid reached the mouth of the cave, Toothless and Stormfly were there to meet them, cooing and crowing happily. Toothless quickly tackled Hiccup to the ground in a burst of affection, licking his entire face while Hiccup struggled to get out from under the dragon's weight, while Stormfly was a little more subdued, nuzzling up against Astrid's face and twitching her tail with excitement.

The other dragons barely stirred, lifting their heads to see who had arrived and lowering them again when they didn't see their own riders.

Astrid scrached under Stormfly's chin. "Sorry to keep you cooped up in here, girl," she said. "I'll take you out flying soon, I promise."

Stormfly squawked in reply, flexing her tail-spikes eagerly.

The walk to the cave had been odd. Astrid had stayed several paces ahead of Hiccup the entire time, never quite letting him catch up, and even now he was slightly out of breath from chasing after her through the woods. His head was still completely buzzing with the significance of what had just happened, while Astrid seemed bound and determined not to address it.

Toothless picked up on Hiccup's distracted vibe, nudging him curiously with a low warble.

Hiccup scratched behind the dragon's ears. "I'll tell you later, bud," he said under his breath.

"Looks like Snotlout fed them all earlier," Astrid said, gesturing to an empty basket on the floor. The cave, she realized, was littered with fishbones-a good sign since neither had brought anything else for the dragons to eat.

Hiccup looked up with a jolt. "What?" he said. "Oh. Right, good."

There was a pause-awkward for Hiccup, amusing for Astrid-where he blushed and she smirked and they both looked away. It was intractable for the time being.

"I don't much like that they've all come ashore like this," Ida said, pushing her dark hair back from her face and tying it in a bun. "D'you think it's really safe?"

Marta and the middle-aged woman were standing in the hall, a long building at the end of the harbour, in the area by the hearth that served as the kitchen. They stood at the counter, chopping onions and carrots for soup.

"Well," Marta said, pausing in mid-chop, "Johann's vouched for them-and we're always only as safe as Johann's judgment allows."

"Hmm," Ida said, drumming her right hand on the counter while she chopped with her left. "The girls from earlier seemed decent enough, that's true-but it isn't that."

"It isn't?"

"No." Ida pulled her hair out of its bun, smoothed it, and put it up again, then returned to her cutting board. "It's this business of having information that somebody else wants, _that's_ what's troubling about it."

"Right. Well." Marta turned away from the counter and swept her chopped carrots into the soup pot over the fire. "We've _always_ had information other people want. It's an occupational hazard of having an island chock-full of brilliant people, isn't it?"

Ida laughed, but her tone stayed serious. "Yes," she said, "but these are dangerous people, Marta, not your usual crowd of drooling literary suitors."

"I _know_ ," Marta said, dropping her knife in annoyance, "but it's bigger than that, don't you see? These-these _hunters_ , they're a threat to the whole archipelago. We owe it to everyone to do what we can to help, Ida."

Ida looked as if she wanted to spit, but settled for making a loud "tch" noise instead. " _Owe_ it to the archipelago? Are you a bloody _amnesiac_ now?" She chopped into an onion with menacing force. "There wasn't a single island in the archipelago that wanted any one of us here, and you think we _owe_ them a solitary thing?"

She put down her knife and readjusted her hair a third time, taking a deep breath.

Marta stepped back a little. "I'm sorry," she said. "Of course you're right. But even then, these Hunters are a threat to Trader Johann-and if nothing else, we owe _him_ a great deal."

"Aye," Ida said, looking at the floor. "That we do."

They carried on their work in silence after that.

There were no interruptions until a pigeon flew in through the open window, cooing fretfully. It landed in the rafters, and it took Ida and Marta both several minutes to coax it down.

When the bird was finally strutting about on the floor, Marta unrolled the message that had come attached to its leg and read it.

"Is there trouble?" Ida said.

Marta's brow furrowed, but only slightly. "Too early to say," she said.

Fishlegs never made it to meet Heather and Ruffnut; he was intercepted by Snotlout, who immediately roped him into being the referee in a stone-skipping contest between him and Tuffnut.

"Although I have to say," Fishlegs said, "It hardly counts as a stone-skipping contest if _neither of you_ can skip a stone."

"Whatever," Snotlout said, "I'm just warming up. Once I get going, Tuffnut is going _down_."

"Very unlikely," Tuffnut replied. "Just wait until I'm limbered up enough to throw a Thorston Special. Three skips forward-" he made three little skipping motions with his hands-"and two skips back."

"Oh, like that's even a _thing_!" Snotlout yelled.

"You guys have been at this for almost half an hour," Fishlegs said. "How can you still be warming up?"

"Hush, Fish-maestro," Tuffnut said. "Watch _this_."

Fishlegs rolled his eyes as Tuffnut wound up and chucked a stone out over the harbour, where it sailed in a long arc...and landed on the deck of Trader Johann's ship, considerably to the left of where the three men were standing.

"Well, that _was_ kind of impressive," Fishlegs said, smirking, while Snotlout laughed.

Tuffnut shifted uncomfortably, then his face lit up. "No, I, uh, meant to do that," he said. "I'm going to skip the rock from over there!" He cocked his head in the direction of the ship, and headed toward the gangplank to cross onto the deck.

"You gotta be kidding me," Fishlegs said, reluctantly trailing after Tuffnut and Snotlout onto the ship again.

Snotlout stared at all the crates sitting on the deck-bags of flour, dried fruit, yak jerky and other supplies, waiting to be offloaded now that all the books were below deck.

"Look at all this stuff," he said. "I can't believe Johann's trading all this for a bunch of lousy books."

"Well, did you see what you guys were carrying out, Snotlout?" Fishlegs said. "They were _hand-copied_ volumes of poetry, plus all those reference books. Nice leatherbound books like that-those are worth a _lot_ to the right people."

"Come on, there's gotta be, like, six months' worth of supplies for a whole village up here," Snotlout replied. "Johann is totally getting screwed by these nutjobs."

"Snotlout!" Fishlegs scolded. "Tuff, stop eating the yak jerky!"

"I can't help it," Tuffnut said. "I'm starving."

"I won't argue with that," Fishlegs said, his own stomach growling. "It's almost time for dinner anyway-let's start heading to the hall."

They left the ship and started walking, rounding the harbour and arriving outside the green fish-scale building to find Heather and Ruffnut standing there as well.

As they came into view, all three boys' jaws dropped.


End file.
